NOTE: I got a couple things wrong in the original story, hopefully I’ve covered all the mistakes. Apologies to Cobra Powersports for the mistakes and the delay in correcting them.

As Brooke pointed out last week, one of Dealer Expo’s biggest surprises was that TGB importer Cobra Powersports has added historic German marque Sachs to their lineup. Cobra is a solid operation with a good dealer network, and most dealers we talked to were pretty excited by the news.Read more

The Taiwanese scooter manufacturer TGB (Taiwan Golden Bee) has had a company called Cobra Sales as their importer for the last several years. The TGB product has been fairly good, if on the budget side of quality ROC scooters. The company is now appearing as Peirspeed and their website shows off thier expanded powersports line. The line-up includes uninspiring formulaic choppers as headliners but has a few new surprises. The Sachs MadAss has gotten a long-awaited displacement upgrade to 125cc. This change makes a lot more sense than powering the heavy and overly tall-in-the-saddle motorcycle with the anaemic 50cc 4 stroke Honda Cub clone motor. While the poor ergonomics have remained, as well as the 50cc option, new MadAss owners will now surely have a higher level of enjoyment with the extra power at the throttle of the nicely spartan and original machine. Another pleasant surprise from Sachs, noted on the Peirspeed website, is a trellis-framed supermoto called the X-Road. It’s a simple but good looking small displacement option that appears very nice as-is but really will scream for engine modifications or outright motor transplants (something two-stroke I’d like the think). Hopefully the new incarnation of Cobra Sales will be able to maintain their adequate level of dealer and parts support with their rapidly expanding line. I can not think of many examples of success following rapid expansion of a powersports line, but maybe they can be the first. Personally I’d like to see new importers stick to keeping it simple until they’ve established a relatively impeccable reputation.

TGB’s newly-announced Xmotion is a pretty handsome scooter, a cross between the very similar-looking Yamaha T-Max and the sportier Peugeot Jetforce (or PGO G-Max/Genuine Blur). Check out the trick front suspension. It’s due out in Europe next year. TGB has a reasonably good reputation here in the U.S., but their current lineup isn’t very exciting, could this be the bike to set them apart?